Empire by Matthew Mead

“Empire” is a piece that uses a combination of video, stop motion animation, and mainstream media film. The video begins with drips of oil onto a white page, symbolic for the catalyst and sustaining element of our society. Transitioning into a George W. Bush film, the soundtrack audibly states, “there is no such thing as real monsters.” Immediately following this is a montage of horrifying media clips portraying prisoners in Guantanamo Bay Prison, an unconstitutional US Military base in Cuba. Recent press reports, as a result of a document leak to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, have highlighted the inhumane detainment of prisoners without due process of law. George Bush, responsible for bringing Guantanamo Bay to precedence following the events of September 11th, 2001, incarcerated hundreds of people from around the world. When Barack Obama ran for president, he vowed to close Guantanamo Bay. However, this has yet to happen. This false promise highlights the lack of change promised from administration to administration. Ultimately, The President must maintain the American empire, and to do so, America must have its stake in oil. As a country founded on the idea of Suburbia, America will go to great lengths to protect it’s interests, even if it means unconstitutionally incarcerating Middle-Eastern prisoners who are viewed as subversive to the American agenda.

leland final 4

Seeking, Searching, Examining

My final project entitled "Seeking, Searching, Examining" incorporates both video and sound. My goal of this project was to create a simple but strong visual piece that would not compete with the tense and layered sound scape I created.I found the simplicity and strength of each individual looking into the camera to be compelling seen against the sound of breath and body rhythms. The incorporation of the continuously turning foot gives the piece a feeling of suspended time, indirectly alluding to the sound score. The combination of these elements interested me. My hope is to stimulate the viewers senses in an unexpected way.

Tyler's Final Film Project

Statement:

The fact is that ideas are funny things. They are weightless and invisible with no material substance, yet ideas have the power to change the course of history. Human history is a complex whole of essential ideas, for ideas are the very substance of history. An idea can be many different things.

This piece portrays many forms of powerful ideas. Whether it be Buddha’s idea of establishing a lasting philosophy, or Copernicus defining the Cosmos, or whether it be the development of Romanticism, all were derived from the human mind.

The movement of ant like razorblades portrays the fluid motions of the immaterial idea. Some ideas grow into inventions and some ideas develop theories, either way it is amazing that something so undefined has the capability to write the course of time. Some of the ideas depicted in this film are ideas of joy, yet some are ideas of hatred. Both of which have the capability of spreading like a disease.

Sara's Final Video Project- Freedom

For my final project I created a piece about freedom that included stop motion, video and sound. I was inspired by a previous video I had created of someone dancing as well as a speech by David Foster Wallace. A particular segment of Wallace’s commencement speech regarding freedom and the idea of noticing and appreciating your surroundings or “water” of life caught my attention. I decided to revolve my piece around three different images that in some way illustrated freedom from my point of view. I chose pieces of Wallace’s speech based on what spoke most to me while reading it. Jamar dancing represents a freedom through movement, while the fish swimming in the confined bag represent the exact opposite of freedom. The shot of the girl standing on the dock represents freedom in a different sort of way. The water is moving freely underneath and around her and yet she is very still. She has the ability to move, and yet she does not. The final images of these three subjects are meant to cause the viewer to question the existence of freedom. Can freedom exist? How does it exist? How do you appreciate your own everyday freedom? Finally, I chose to end the piece with a rush of pictures of details that I took from my own everyday life. The images represent my freedom and choice to appreciate the details of nature.

Amy Final

For my final project I chose to work with a variety of kitchen appliances and objects that have seemingly no connection with the kitchen or any utilitarian uses in general. Everything we do in the kitchen has some end goal, some purpose, a use. I wanted to toy with the concept of usefulness and play. In this video, objects such as a skillet, a mixing bowl, a serving spoon, and a cheese grater are taken and played with in ways that are meant to seem either contrary or simply useless. Almost all of the footage shows some manipulation of the materials by an unknown outside performer, this is at once an attempt to give the objects a life of their own and remove at least some of the control that is implied when one manipulates objects. The use of rain on a windshield and the sound of water being played in are used to show the lack of control and purpose that I have attempted to portray with the kitchen related objects. Though rain itself obviously has a purpose, the movement of the rain on the windshield and the sound of playing in a puddle are meant to show how very useful things can be. at times, simply for play.

Julian's Final

Statement:
We’ve spent the entire semester playing with the dimension of time. We’ve used media that incorporates this fourth dimension in a more literal sense. This is to say that video and sound fill a physical frame of time. Here I am combining these four media into video and audio to convey yet another dimension, that of the greater notion of time. This larger idea of time, similar to fate, is a more abstract and emotional idea. Most of us are confronted with the reality of time as we grow up, reflecting on the life we’ve lived thus far. The most formidable years of my adolescence have been my later teenage years as I face a fork in the road between a foreign and professional world and the familiar innocence of childhood. But I often ask myself where my loyalty really lies.
This video is intended to incorporate all of these ideas into one. A man’s hollow silhouette sporting a sweatshirt, jacket, and Ipod walks up to a mirror but his reflection does not match his silhouette. The naked reflection slowly dresses himself in preppy business clothes as the hooded figure strips down to nothing. This is meant to represent one life giving way to another, childhood being stripped naked by adulthood. In another sense, though, it begs the questions which is more real; a shadow or a reflection? On a further note, the entire piece is nothing more than a projection onto a screen filmed through a camera adding yet another dimension of false reality. Meanwhile we hear the sound of a heartbeat, representing the life and vigor of youth. Toward the middle of the piece a ticking clock meshes with the heartbeat. These two differing rhythms fight with each other, falling in sync and back out again until the clock finally wins. Much like the character in the mirror, the clock represents a rigid mechanized businessman (not to mention time) that consumes both the heartbeat and the more youthful hooded figure.


Changing